“But why would it follow me?”
“Because you’re the one who will find the Alq,” she said, her voice hinting at exasperation.
“That’s a ‘catel turistat suus caudam’ argument,” he objected.
“Yes,” she agreed. “It goes round and round. Doesn’t mean it’s not true.”
“Well, is it supposed to kill m—Kauron’s heir?”
“I’ve already told you what I know,” she said.
Stephen remembered the monster’s glance as it found him from half a league away and shivered.
“Is it that bad?” she asked.
“I hope you don’t ever have to find out, no matter what the prophecy says,” Stephen replied.
“I’m kind of curious, actually. But set all that aside; you did have a look on your face. If it wasn’t guilt, then what was it?”
“Oh. That.”
Her eyes narrowed. “What do you mean, ‘that’? Don’t you dare tell me you don’t want to talk about it.”
“I—” He sighed. “I was wondering what would happen if we simply forgot this whole prophecy business and just went off into the mountains someplace. Maybe Hespero and the woorm would kill each other and everyone would forget the Alq.”
Her brows leapt up. “Go off together? You and me? You mean, like husband and wife?”
“Ah, well, I suppose I did mean that, yes.”
“That’s all well and good, but I hardly know you, Stephen.”
“But we—”
“Yes, didn’t we? And I enjoyed it. I like you, but what have either of us to offer the other? I’ve no dowry. Do you think your family would take to me under those conditions?”
Stephen didn’t have to think about that for long.
“No,” he admitted.
“And without your family, what do you have to offer me? Love?”
“Maybe,” he said cautiously.
“Maybe. That’s exactly right. Maybe.
“You wouldn’t be the first to confuse sex with love, Stephen. It’s a silly confusion, too. Anyway, a day ago you were desperately in love with someone else. Can a few well-placed kisses change that so easily? If so, how can I trust in any constancy from you?”
“Now you’re making fun of me,” Stephen said.
“Yes, I am, and no, I’m not. Because if I didn’t laugh at you, I might get angry, and neither of us needs that right now. If you want to run off into the mountains, you’ll have to do it alone. I’ll go on to the Witehhorn and try to find the Alq myself. Because even if the praifec and the waurm do destroy each other, there are others looking, and someone will find it eventually.”
“How do you know all this?” Stephen asked.
“The Book of Return—”
“But you’ve never seen the book,” Stephen snapped, cutting her off. “Everything you know is based on a thousand-year-old rumor about a book no one has seen except Hespero, if even that is true. So how do you know any of this is true?”
She started to answer, but he cut her off again.
“Have you ever read the Lay of Walker?”
“I’ve heard of it,” she said. “It’s about the Virgenyan warrior who fought off the demon fleet of Thiuzan Hraiw, isn’t it?”
“Yes. But here’s the thing: Historically, Walker lived a century or so before the start of the Warlock Wars, a hundred and fifty years before Thiuzan Hraiw even began to build his fleet.
“Chetter Walker fought off a fleet, all right, if you call ten ships a fleet. And they were from Ihnsgan, an ancient Iron Sea kingdom. But the epic, you see, was written down five hundred years later, after the chaos of the Warlock Wars, when Virgenya’s new enemy was Hansa.
“Thiuzan Hraiw was from Hansa, and his name has a very typically Hanzish sound to it. So the bards—sworn as they are to keep the songs exactly the way they heard them on pain of being cursed by Saint Rosemary—nevertheless have Walker living in the wrong century, fighting the wrong enemy, with weapons that hadn’t been invented yet. Oral tradition always promises it’s kept history straight, and it never does. So what makes you think your ancestors kept their little saga faithfully?”
“Because,” she replied stubbornly, “I have seen the actual book, or at least part of it, the part about you.”
That brought him up short. “Have you? And how did you manage that?”
She closed her eyes, and he saw her jaw tighten.
“I was Hespero’s lover,” she said.
That afternoon Zemlé pointed out the top of the Witchhorn. Stephen supposed he’d been envisioning something shaped like an ox horn, curving up into the sky, surrounded by storm clouds, lightning, and the distant black shapes of evil spirits whirling about its peak.
Instead, aside from being perhaps a bit taller than its neighbors, it was—to him, at least—indistinguishable from any other mountain in the Bairghs.
“We’ll reach the base of it by tomorrow noon,” she said.
He nodded but didn’t answer.
“You haven’t spoken since this morning,” she said. “I’m beginning to feel annoyed. Surely you understood that you weren’t my first lover.”
“But Hespero?” he burst out. “Oh, I think you might have mentioned that before I followed you up here, before I put all my trust in you.”
“Well, the point was rather to have you trust me,” she pointed out.
“Right. And I did. Until now, anyway, when I have no choice.”
“I’m not proud of it, Stephen, but the saints hate a liar. You asked, and I told you. Its more important that you believe the prophecy than think well of me.”
“How old were you when this happened? Ten?”
“No,” she said patiently. “I was twenty-five.”
“You said he left your village years ago,” Stephen snapped. “You can’t be much older than twenty-five now.”
“Flatterer. I’m exactly twenty-five, as of last week.”
“You mean—”
“Since he returned, yes,” she said.
“Saints, that’s even worse!”
She glared at him from her kalbok across about three kingsyards of broken ground.
“If I were close enough,” she said, “I would slap you. I did what I had to. I’m not a fool, you know. I had the same doubts about the prophecy as you. Now I don’t.”
“Did you enjoy it?” he asked.
“He was a good deal more experienced than you,” she shot back.
“Ah. No tafleis anscrifteis there, eh?” he responded sarcastically.
Her face contorted, and she began a retort but then closed her eyes and took a few deep breaths. When she opened her eyes, she was more composed.
“This is my fault,” she said at last, evenly. “I knew you were young and lacking experience. I should have known it would do this to you.”
“Do what?”
“Make you stupid with jealousy. You’re jealous of a man I slept with before I ever met you. Does that make any sense to you at all?”
“Well, it’s just that—”
“Yes?” she asked patiently enough to make him feel once more that he was a little boy.
“—he’s evil,” he finished weakly.
“Is he?” she asked. “I don’t know. Certainly he’s our enemy in that he wants the same thing we do. But I haven’t betrayed you to him; indeed, I betrayed him to you. So stop being such a boy and try to be a man for once. You don’t need experience for that, just courage.”
That night saw no reprise of the night before. Stephen lay awake for long bells, excruciatingly aware of Zemlé’s every breath and movement. His mind moved downward toward sleep in fits, but a strong breath or turn of her body would snap him back.
She’s awake. She’s forgiven me…
But he wasn’t sure he needed forgiveness. She’d slept with apraifec. Surely that was a sin even if Hespero was a Skaslos reincarnated. And just before—